Taking care of an infant is a huge responsibility. A baby depends on a parent or caregiver to meet all of his or her needs. Many new parents feel unprepared for this job and overwhelmed by the responsibility. The explosion of new products designed for babies and toddlers testifies to the desire of most parents to provide the best for their children. Consumers are looking for products that protect their children and make caring for infants and toddlers a little easier.
A child's safety is usually the area of greatest concern for many new parents. Parents and caregivers go to great lengths to ensure that infants and toddlers are raised in safe environments. Parents often install outlet protectors in their house to prevent a child from getting electrocuted. They also cushion corners of tables to prevent serious cuts and bruises and buy and install anchors to secure large pieces of furniture to the wall to prevent them from falling over on a child. Safety gates on stairwells and video and audio monitors to keep tabs on a baby at all times are also common features in many homes.
Car safety for an infant is an area of paramount concern for parents and caregivers. Most countries have passed laws requiring the operator of a motor vehicle with a child or infant inside to properly restrain the infant or child in an approved car seat or carrier. Child safety seats work by securing the child in a padded seat that has been sized to protect the child from being thrown loose in the event of an accident. One of two harness styles is commonly used to secure the child into the car seat—the five-point harness or the restraining bar. Both types of harness systems require that a strap pass between the legs of the child. One drawback to this center strap is that it can be difficult to secure the strap if the child is wearing bulky clothing. It is especially difficult to secure this strap if the child is wearing a one-piece sack style sleeper.
Many parents dress their children in sleep sacks because they help to keep the baby warm and also are more comfortable for the child since small children will often pull their legs up and out of the leg openings in standard sleepers and then are unable to get their legs back in the openings when they try to straighten them back out. The lack of leg openings in sleep sacks means that the only way to pass the center strap of the car seat between the child's legs is to draw the baby's legs up towards their chests which is both unsafe and uncomfortable for the child.
Hence, there is a need in the art for a safe, effective and cost efficient baby sleep sack with an opening through the front and back of the sack to permit a strap from a car seat to pass through it.